Summary
In many respects traditional automation in the forest-machine industry has reached an upper limit, since the driver already has to deal with an excess of information and take too many decisions at a very high pace. To further automation still, introduction of semi-autonomous and autonomous functions are expected and considered necessary. This paper describes an ongoing project along these ideas. We describe the development of the hardware and software of an unmanned shuttle that shifts timber from the area of felling to the main roads for further transportation. A new path-tracking algorithm is introduced, and demonstrated as being superior to standard techniques, such as Follow the Carrot and Pure Pursuit. To facilitate the research and development, a comprehensive software architecture for sensor and actuator interfacing is developed. Obstacle avoidance is accomplished by a new kind of radar, developed for and by the automotive industry. Localization is accomplished by combining data from a Real-Time Kinematic Differential GPS/GLONASS and odometry. Tests conducted on a simulator and a small-scale robot show promising results. Tests on the real forest machine are ongoing.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. J. Barton. Controller Development and Implementation for Path Planning and Following in an Autonomous Urban Vehicle. Undergraduate thesis, University of Sydney, Nov. 2001.
R. C. Coulter. Implementation of the pure pursuit path tracking algorithm. Technical Report CMU-RI-TR-92-01, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, January 1992.
F. Georgsson, T. Hellström, T. Johansson, K. Prorok, O. Ringdahl, and U. Sandström. Development of an autonomous path tracking forest machine-a status report-. Technical Report UMINF 05.08, Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, 2005.
U. Hallonborg. Förarlösa skogsmaskiner kan bli lönsamma. Skogforsk RESULTAT, (9), 2003.
T. Hellström. Autonomous navigation for forest machines. Technical Report UMINF 02.13, Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, 2002.
T. Hellström and O. Ringdahl. Follow the past-a path tracking algorithm for autonomous forest vehicles. Technical Report UMINF 04.11, Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, 2004.
T. Hellström and O. Ringdahl. Autonomous path tracking using recorded orientation and steering commands. In Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems 2005, Imperial College London, England, 2005.
R. Kalman. A new approach to linear filtering and prediction problems. Transactions of the ASME-Journal of Basic Engineering, 82:35–45, 1960.
H. Mäkelä and K. Koskinen. Navigation of outdoor mobile robots using dead reckoning and visually detected landmarks. In ICAR’91 Fifth International Conference on Advanced Robotics, pages 1151–1156, June 1991.
P. Z. Peebles Jr. Radar Principles. John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
O. Ringdahl. Path tracking and obstacle avoidance for forest machines. Master’s Thesis UMNAD 454/03, Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, 2003.
A. Robotics. Robots, AGV’s & robotic sensing. http://www.activmedia.com/, 27 Jan. 2005.
I. Ulrich and J. Borenstein. VFH+: Reliable obstacle avoidance for fast mobile robots. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pages 1572–1577, May 1998.
K. Westlund and T. Hellström. Requirements and system design for a robot performing selective cleaning in young forest stands. to be published in Journal of Terramechanics, 2005.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hellström, T., Johansson, T., Ringdahl, O. (2006). Development of an Autonomous Forest Machine for Path Tracking. In: Corke, P., Sukkariah, S. (eds) Field and Service Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 25. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg . https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33453-8_50
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33453-8_50
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-33452-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-33453-8
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)